Race Riots and Labour Rebellions: Interwar Jamaica’s Economic Crisis Amidst A Racial Divide

• In Event: Crisis and Wealth in the Black Economy

Abstract

As the Great Depression gripped the global economy, the lack of opportunities for native-born Jamaicans galvanized massive protests for workers’ rights on the island. This followed a trend in the 1930s Caribbean, where the British Caribbean’s “Labour Rebellions” saw the region’s Black populations express their anger with the state of local economies and colonial governments. These protests, marches, and labor strikes birthed Trade Unions, Political Parties, and Nationalist Movements. Yet, Chinese Jamaicans, a group that emerged in the 1860s, maintained a level of normalcy during this difficult period. The majority of these community members were proprietors of grocery stores, bakeries, and provisions shops, cornerstones of many Jamaican towns and villages. The racial and economic disparities between the owners and clientele were hard to ignore for many on the island and in a time of crisis. This paper explores the origins of tensions between the Afro-Jamaican and Chinese-Jamaican populations by examining cross-racial relationships under the pressure of a degenerating economy. Despite these noble goals of the Rebellion that sought to empower Jamaica’s Black majority, this period also saw an increase in violence against businesses owned by Chinese Jamaicans. Why was this sector of the population targeted by Afro-Jamaicans? Through an examination of the economic crisis of the Labor Rebellion of 1938, this paper will argue governmental inactivity by the Colonial Office allowed for the racial and economic divide among non-white Jamaicans to fester, and it led to the destruction of many Chinese businesses in the Jamaican Anti-Chinese riots of 1938.

Author

• Christopher Davis, Adelphi University